Editor Interview: The Wise Owl

A host of literary genres

Harper’s magazine, Ploughshares, Cha (an Asian Literary Magazine) & Kitaab.

We have published interviews of award-winning writers, poets and artists. Our Wall of Fame includes renowned writers like Daisy Rockwell (awarded the International Booker Prize for her translation of Geetanjali Shree's Tomb of Sand), Graeme Macrae Burnet and Audrey Magee, both longlisted for Booker Prize 2022, Ireland-based JR Thorp and UK based Will Burns (both ranked among Top 10 Debut novelists of 2021 by The Observer) Denmark-based Tabish Khair, Mumbai-based Arundhathi Subramaniam, Madagascar based poet-diplomat Abhay K, Namita Gokhale, Co-founder of the prestigious Jaipur Literature Festival, among others. We also did an exclusive interview with Roger Frappier, producer of The Power of The Dog, an Oscar winning film.

We have featured artists like Julie Rhodes and Singh Twins from Britain, Harley Brown from Canada, David Zinn from USA, Albert Kiefer from Holland, Madan Lal, Parag Bose from India, Raghu Rai, Father of Indian photography, and many others.
Our magazine showcases poetry, stories, creative non fiction & Reviews (Film & Book) by lovers of literature & art from across the globe. Steve Carr, Jeffrey Feingold & Ranjit Powar are some of our favourite writers while Sudeep Sen, George Freek, Abin Chakraborty, Donna Pucciani are some of our most sought after poets. We also have podcasts where our poets/writers render their work. Our Montage segment showcases short films on contemporary issues. Our magazine is a tapestry that is creative & aesthetic.

We feel that no other publication offers such a variety of literary genres and visual art on a single platter. The Podcast and Montage segment add a distinct audio-visual flavour to our magazine. Our Team works hard to ensure that our works are creative, literary and aesthetic. Probably our most attractive feature is the manner in which we showcase our content with creative & aesthetic design layouts.

The Wise Owl Team prides itself in giving everyone an equal shot at publication, based solely on the quality of their work. We favour originality, freshness, innovation and novelty and would encourage our contributors to adhere to our norms. That is not to say we turn up our noses at traditional works. Well-written quality pieces are always welcome.
The Wise Owl welcomes submissions of hitherto unpublished poetry, Fiction (Short Stories), Non-Fiction (Essays, memoirs, travelogues, Reviews (Books/Films/TV Series/OTT releases). To have the best chance of being accepted by our Editorial team, please take a few minutes to read our Guidelines before you submit. Submit your contributions to [email protected]

The Wise Owl Team believes in giving everyone an equal shot at publication, based solely on the quality of their work. We favour work that is original, fresh and innovative. We only accept work that has not been published before. We would request our contributors to take a few minutes to read our Contributor Guidelines ( https://www.thewiseowl.art/contributor-guidelines) before you submit. Submissions may be sent to [email protected]

In the Literary segment, submitters sometimes do not adhere to the word count mandated in our guidelines. In the Visual Art segment, submitters often send just a couple of visual art images. We need 6-8 artworks/photographs/graphic designs for the Visual art segment.

We need our contributors to attach a short biography or resume (30-50 words) and their photograph ( only if they are comfortable sharing it) along with their submission as we display the resume and photograph along with the featured work. We also need them to certify that their work is their own and has not been published elsewhere.

Our Editorial Team goes through the entire piece (poem or article), evaluates it on the parameters mentioned above, before deciding on whether to accept it or not.
Sometimes the works are good but there are some syntactical or grammatical errors that spoil the piece. In such cases we request the contributors to revise and re-submit.

There are no other additional evaluation parameters, except the ones I have mentioned above.

My days are mostly a mad scramble. I spend almost 8 hours working non-stop, alongside my dedicated team to make The Wise Owl, a magazine that every literature and art lover will be addicted to. There is lots to do. My day begins with the clock striking 9 a.m. My first order of the day is to take a quick look at my Inbox and respond to the mails we have received. I prefer to respond to all our contributors with a personal email which takes up a lot of my time but is extremely rewarding because it establishes and strengthens our bond with the contributors. The rest of the day is spent in parleys with our Editorial team, social media team and tech team about the content and layouts for the next issue. The best part of my day is the time I spend on reaching out to established poets/writers/artists for interviews. This requires a lot of research. It is painful when on account of time constraints, we are refused an interview but our team celebrates every time a big name in the world of literature or art accepts our request for an interview.
But I love my work, so my gruelling 8-hour schedule flies by and before I know it, it is 6 pm in the evening and I receive a call from my better half or my children telling me it is time to shut down for the day.

We do basic proof reading to ensure there are no syntactical and grammatical errors. However, if there is any editing done, we make sure to run it by the writer before publishing it.

We plan to do that starting now.